MOORLAND: A RETROSPECTIVE IN HARMONY
Anna's parents had fled the burning libraries and silenced temples of Angla when the Roma war machines rolled across the border in 2045, swallowing the gentle Bamis culture whole. They were refugees, carrying nothing but the ghost of a language and a deep, cellular fear.
They found sanctuary not just in a country, but in an ideal. Moorland.
Forged in the aftermath of the 21st century's climate collapses and resource wars, Moorland began as a techno-utopian pact between the surviving nations of the African continent, who provided the land and resources, and the advanced, disciplined city-states of Nesia, Nac, Rea, Yar ,Stan ,Stine, Gypt , Dia and Jan, who provided the technology and organizational principle. By 2055, the "Diplomatic Expansion" was complete. It was not an empire seized by force, but a supercontinent built by invitation—a mutual defense and harmony pact spanning from the Atlantic to the Pacific, all under the guiding, anonymous wisdom of the Motherboard.
The governance was a masterpiece of balanced control. The Motherboard set the universal protocols for harmony, safety, and economic stability. But beneath this, local rule was delegated to a intricate network of Clans, Tribes, and former National Councils, who were free to practice their cultures—so long as those practices did not disrupt the overarching Harmony. A Yoruba chief, a Nesian tech-lord, and a Janese industrialist all answered to the same fundamental rules, creating a vibrant, diverse, yet impeccably ordered society.
Its geography was its strength. It controlled the world's richest deposits of rare-earth elements, the most fertile automated vertical farms, and the most advanced quantum computing hubs. The Saar was the world's reserve currency, backed by this immense tangible and intellectual wealth.
Its military was its guarantee. They had won the Two Containment Wars—against Roma aggression in the north and Ngol insurgencies in the south—with breathtaking efficiency and minimal casualties. Their strategy was not brute force, but overwhelming technological and logistical dominance. No one dared venture against them. To be Moorlandish was to be safe. To be protected.
This safety had a price: perfection. With crime rates algorithmically predicted and pre-empted, the rate had plummeted to an unnatural 0.25%. To preserve a sense of "human nature" and to keep its vast law enforcement apparatus sharp, the government itself staged harmless crimes. A "pickpocket" would be caught and return stolen items almost immediately. "Armed robbers" only attacked guard droids which "somehow " we're never strong enough to stop the robbery only for the stolen items to be confiscated later in the week through a police "investigation" . It was a performative rebellion, a safety valve that ultimately validated the system's total control. It proved they had thought of everything.
When a citizen was sad, the system responded. A person collapsing in tears on a street would be swarmed by others—some genuinely compassionate, others earning their Saar Points—in a display of communal care that was immediately logged and rewarded. The police would arrive not to arrest, but to solve, to soothe, to integrate. The protocol was kindness, and it worked. It created a beautiful, serene, and utterly inescapable cage.
Anna's family, some of the last 25,000 free Bamis people, were cherished relics in this system. Their preservation was a testament to Moorland's cultural harmony. Their gentle nature made them perfect for roles like Anna's: a State-Assisted Friendship Companion. Her assignment to Ethan was a high-priority task. His healing would be a feather in the cap of the entire harmony protocol, proof that even the most broken could be mended by the system's benevolent, unwavering care.
Her success meant more than SP; it meant the potential to bring her extended family from a ragged border camp into the warm, programmed embrace of Moorland itself. Every word she spoke to Ethan, every laugh, every moment of measured comfort, was a brick in that path. The state monitored her dopamine levels not out of care for her joy, but as a metric for the project's success. Her dream, her unexpected attraction—these were variables the system hadn't fully calculated. They were the faint, dangerous glitches of something real, threatening to crack the perfect, aesthetic surface.